Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1)

by James Costall

  “It’ll be a fantastic opportunity for a new challenge,” Baron had said.

  Jeez, he’d been right.

  *

  “How long has he been there?” asked Baron.

  Maurice scratched his bald head. He watched a techie take some photos of the body before answering. “I’d say between eight and ten hours.”

  “Who found him?”

  “I did, sir,” the PC took a tentative step forward. He wasn’t sure whether finding the body was an honour or a burden.

  “After I received the call from the gentleman at the city morgue who told me that he had a bag containing a dead dog with my name on it,” explained Harker, “I called Ephraim Speck to check he and Megan were all right. There was no response on any of the numbers I had for him. I was concerned by this and in consequence I asked the local police to attend Parkview Abbey and report back.”

  “I got the call about four hours ago,” chipped in the uniform, wondering whether that information was helpful in any way. By Baron’s unchanged grimace, he surmised that it was not and resolved to keep quiet from this point onwards.

  “What’s the cause of death?” asked Baron, walking round the side of the room to change the angle of his view. It looked gruesome whichever way he looked at it.

  “Not sure what actually killed him till I get to take a look inside,” said Reid. “Could have been loss of blood or just hypovolemic shock. He was an old fellow. In fact some think that the cause of death in cases like this is asphyxiation. The weight of the body created by the arms being outstretched is driven downwards congesting the throat and lungs. I can’t think of a more painful way to die.”

  The nails that fastened Eph Speck to the wall had been driven through his wrists. His feet sat on a single nail driven into the wall beneath him to support his weight. His head was slumped to one side. Black blood trickled down and had clotted at the tip of his nose. His eyes were open.

  “Do you want to revise your opinion of Eugene Anwick?” Baron asked Harker.

  “Why?”

  “Because Megan’s kidnapping and this murder are clearly connected with Katelyn’s death. Anwick was not working alone, and working in conjunction with people is rather inconsistent with the notion of insanity, wouldn’t you say? It seems to me, Amanda, that your decision to rid yourself of the services of Fielding and Franchot should perhaps be reviewed.”

  Harker said nothing. After a moment longer soaking up the horror of the scene in the library, she turned on her heel and walked out without a word.

  Chapter 30

  Nobody noticed Alix squeeze in through the glass door and take a seat at the back of the incident room. There were seven or eight officers huddled in groups looking earnestly towards a translucent board at the front on which various scribbles and pictures had been posted. Alix could make out the photographs of the Laicey twins from two years ago, enlarged versions of the pictures the press were printing every day. When there was no new news, the media just ran the same story from different angles over and over again. Sadly, nothing sells papers like a dead child.

  Ash stood at the front checking some notes, preparing to address his team. His jacket was crumpled over a chair and he wore a waistcoat and no tie. He looked more like a slightly eccentric art teacher than a detective. She recognised some people in the room: Eran Green, the fat, sick-looking detective who was one of the first at the White Helmsley scene, and Keera Julian, who she would try and ignore if she got the chance. There were others that she hadn’t met before. She wondered where Baron was. A few had noticed her and were busy nudging each other and nodding towards her. She felt self-conscious all of a sudden. The new girl in class.

  Ash looked around before taking a sip from the polyester cup that held his chemical based coffee. He planned to drink about three quarters of it. Anymore and he risked coming into contact with the enigmatic sediments at the bottom of the cup that reminded him his coffee was made by a machine that cost less than his kettle at home.

  There was a nervous silence in the room, the significance of which was not lost on him. Normally he enjoyed this room. It buzzed. There was an energy to it. People pitched in, threw their ideas at him; the people in this room would lay their hearts in front of their leader if they thought it would help. But not today. Today they just looked tired and confused.

  “I appreciate that some of you – some of us – didn’t get much sleep last night. I reckon it’s going to be one of those weeks,” announced Ash, not looking up from his notes. He took another sip of coffee and put the papers down. “There have been developments,” he said grimly.

  Alix shuffled a little in her seat. She caught Ash’s eye and for a moment he held her gaze from across the room. For one horrible moment she thought he might say something to her in front of everyone but he walked to the incident board. She breathed out heavily.

  “The Laicey case was meant to be open and shut. But now I’m afraid it’s rather more complicated,” he said quietly. He was choosing his words carefully. “Professor Eugene Anwick was found with the dead child in his arms and so far has omitted to actually say he didn’t kill her which made him a pretty good starting point. Except it’s now not that simple. As you know, Katelyn was one part of twins. Her sister, Megan, is believed to have witnessed Katelyn’s killing and was taken to a registered safe house in Lincolnshire where she was put in the care of one Ephraim Speck. The place is called Parkview Abbey. Speck is a German national. Last night he was found strung up on a wall in his own library. He had been crucified.”

  There was a low murmur in the room and a lot of shuffling uncomfortably in seats. Ash paused before turning his back to his audience and producing a picture from the file he had placed on the desk. He pinned it to the board. Alix leaned forward to look closer. It appeared to show the distorted figure of an old man, his arms spread-eagle, feet clamped together, head slumped to one side.

  “Megan Laicey is gone. We have no sign of forced entry, no broken windows, no trace whatsoever of any intruder and the front door was locked from the inside.”

  “So somebody broke in without making a mess, strung this guy up like Jesus and kidnapped Megan,” said Keera. There was a level of detachment to everything she said that annoyed Alix, like it didn’t mean anything to her.

  “Yes,” replied Ash, not looking at her. His gaze fell upon Alix again for a moment. “But your day,” he said louder, “is about to get even more complicated, people.”

  Ash turned back to his papers and picked out another photo. He pinned it to the incident board and once again everyone craned their necks forward to see. More murmuring. Just in front of Alix she could hear someone exclaim: “what the fuck is that?”

  “Two hours ago,” said Ash, “Amanda Harker Q.C., the prosecution counsel in the Anwick case, advised us that she had received a call from a guy at the city morgue. He’d taken charge of a bag that should have contained the body of Katelyn Laicey. What it actually contained was the mangled corpse of a dog that looked as though it had been in a fight with a bear. The dog had a tag round its hind leg with Harker’s personal mobile number on it.”

  “So we’ve lost both Megan Laicey and Katelyn Laicey’s body?” The voice was from the young detective in front of Ash. He looked a little over thirteen, Alix thought. He had thick, sandy hair and freckles. He might be quite cute in a few years time, she thought. In fact his name was Jeff Eldridge.

  “That’s exactly what we’ve done,” conceded Ash.

  “And that means Anwick wasn’t working alone,” said Keera. “I take it he’s not accountable for either disappearance.”

  “He’s accounted for,” replied Ash. He stopped there, hoping he wouldn’t get many more questions. Frankly, he didn’t have many more answers.

  “But if someone wanted Megan dead and that person was working with Anwick, how did Megan get away the first time around?” Jeff looked puzzled. They were all making the assumption that Anwick had killed Katelyn in the first place, thought Alix. But the r
evelation that Katelyn’s body and Megan were gone simply crystallised what she already suspected: Anwick hadn’t killed anyone.

  “I have no idea. But the priority at the moment is finding Megan Laicey,” said Ash.

  “What about the massacre at White Helmsley?” asked Eran Green.

  “That for now isn’t our problem,” replied Ash. “South Glos are dealing with that for now.” There was no hiding the resentment in Ash’s voice.

  “But guv,” someone protested from the front row, “it’s on our patch.”

  “Listen, I don’t call the shots,” Ash said. “People with larger pay cheques than me do that. We don’t have the resources to deal with all four incidents. Finding Megan Laicey is priority one. There’s no link between what happened at White Helmsley and the Laiceys, other than that everything appears to have happened in the same week. Besides, the media are all over White Helmsley now. They’re going crazy – the investigation team’ll be hounded for the next three months over this.”

  “How the Hell did the paps find out so soon?” asked Keera.

  “Because I told them.” This time, Ash looked directly at Keera, daring her to challenge him. But she didn’t. In fact, she gave a small smile back.

  “To take the pressure of us,” she said.

  “Yes. So we don’t have any interference with our efforts to find Megan Laicey.” Ash leant over a desk in front of everything and stared intimately at his team. “The next five hours will be critical. The media don’t know that we let a little girl in a safe house get herself kidnapped but when they find out – and they will – they’ll hang us out to dry. We have to find Megan quickly and bring her home safe. For now, nothing else matters.”

  Chapter 31

  The Harbinger was contented. So far, he had carried out his duties perfectly.

  The fifth Law of the Ether: Should any place bear witness to a forbidden act, then that place shall have a particular connection with the Inter-World and shall be called a Portal.

  Now the Portal had been created.

  The Hollow One drew near. He could feel it. The final stages were now underway.

  Disposing of the traitor Ephraim Speck had felt satisfying, albeit that the Harbinger had wished his opponent had put up a better fight. The conflict had been short and one sided. The Harbinger had hoped for a more worthy adversary. Perhaps that would be yet to come. Nonetheless, the image of Speck nailed to the wall of his own home, arms spread out wide and neck broken, had been pleasing.

  In a dingy basement, the Harbinger took the dead body of Katelyn Laicey in his arms and gently placed her onto a wooden table. Acquiring the body had been easy. The Harbinger had many assistants; some voluntarily, some unwittingly. Finding corruption within the hospital had not been hard.

  He brushed a straggle of hair from the child’s eyes and, with the tenderness of a lover’s touch, brushed her bruised cheeks. The body had started to decompose but the process was not too far advanced. Patches of black, dried blood covered her face and arms but things had been slowed by the treatment she had received when she first arrived at the hospital. The switch had taken place after that process was complete but before the body was sent downstairs for storage and to await a post mortem.

  The Harbinger appraised his catch dotingly. Her neck was broken and the life had ebbed away from her now. He admired the way her pretty little head was snapped to the side, distorting her features and making her look like a rag doll cast aside by an uncaring child. It was beautiful.

  The Harbinger turned and looked at Megan. She sat in the corner of the room on a small wooden chair. She looked at the Harbinger absently; the same painstakingly expressionless look etched on her face. He stared at her but he could see nothing in her eyes. They were a deep chasm; an empty, blue ocean.

  “It won’t be long now, Megan,” said the Harbinger softly.

  She didn’t respond.

  He turned back to Katelyn, walked round the back of the table slowly, carefully, and placed his hands lightly on the sides of her temples so that her body lay outstretched away from him. She was naked save for a white cloth that the Harbinger had placed over her, covering the lower half of her torso and the tops of her legs. The Harbinger knew that he was not to disrespect or interfere with one of Cronos’ Children and had no desire to in any event.

  With his fingers tenderly feeling the sides of her head, the Harbinger closed his eyes. He spoke to his inner self and began to unlock the power that slumbered within him. He could feel it start to flow through him, like a drug working its way through his bloodstream. The sensation was like nothing he had experienced whist he was just Man.

  Had he looked round, he would have looked into Megan’s eyes; across the two blue oceans and to the horizon beyond where the grey sky kissed the water and the colours blurred into one. Had he done so, had he looked intimately enough, he would have seen a lacuna in that place between sky and water and he would have wondered what was missing. But as the Harbinger drove deeper into his mind and his awareness of the physical world around him dissipated, Megan stood to get a closer look at the strange union this giant man had with her sister. And as she looked, something filled the lacuna in her eyes and for a brief moment Megan Laicey felt alive again.

  Hung limp by the table, Katelyn Laicey’s right hand twitched.

  Chapter 32

  Ash and Keera sat in a windowless interview room watching the strange specimen of a human being they had brought in for questioning squirm uncomfortably in his chair. His name was Ernst Stranger. He worked at the hospital morgue and a few hours ago he had called Amanda Harker on her personal mobile number and told her that he had found her dog. As it happened, Harker didn’t have a dog and the mutilated beast that Ernst had found in the bag that should have contained Katelyn’s body was probably a stray.

  Things were being done at speed. Keera had only had a brief conversation with Ernst’s superior over the telephone. She had learnt a lot about him in that time though and had hurriedly passed on the information to Ash before they had sat down. Ernst was an odd character. He was practically a hermit. He had few friends and no one knew him at the hospital well at all. He kept himself to himself. They suspected he was a self-harmer and they knew he had a history of being bullied at school. Both his parents had died at a young age in a car accident and Ernst had been brought up by his grandmother; a vile, pig of a woman who would beat him regularly.

  The hospital was investigating a complaint made by a nurse a month ago that she had found two of the bodies taken from the morgue to have a post mortem to have been touched by Ernst. They were concerned but couldn’t prove anything. But as an upshot Ernst was being closely monitored.

  Ash watched the interviewee with interest. He was constantly moving. Touching himself, reaching round the back of his neck and scratching, looking around. Like a rat trapped in a cage.

  “Hello, Ernst,” Ash began brightly. He looked as though he was barely out of adolescence and regarded Ash anxiously before grunting a response.

  “I want a lawyer,” he said. “Yes, a lawyer. Get me a lawyer.”

  “Ah,” sighed Ash, sitting back in his chair and folding his arms. “Unfortunately, Ernst, you can’t have a lawyer.”

  Ernst looked shocked and dug deep into the wound on the back of his neck. As he did so, the pain caused him to grimace and for an odd moment he looked even more rat like.

  “I am,” he countered. “I know my rights. Yes. And I want a lawyer.”

  “Isn’t it funny, Sergeant Julian,” Ash turned to Keera with a smile, “how everyone who sits in that chair knows their rights?”

  “It’s very amusing,” Keera said but her face remained resolute and she did not for one instance take her penetrating glare off Ernst who wriggled and squirmed in his chair even more.

  “You see,” continued Ash, “we haven’t arrested you, Ernst. Therefore, you’re not entitled to a lawyer. You’re just here helping us voluntarily with our routine enquiries, for which sergeant Julian and
I are grateful.”

  “So I’m free to leave if I want to?” asked Ernst, delightedly getting up from the chair, knocking his knee against the desk in his hurry.

  “Oh course. Right after you answer a few questions,” replied Ash pleasantly, motioning for Ernst to sit down. He knew he was on dangerous ground but they hadn’t got time to be messing around with the duty solicitor. In any event, he could say that with Megan Laicey gone and this enquiry clearly linked, the circumstances were exceptional enough to interview Ernst without a lawyer present if he needed to. But in all likelihood, Ernst would sit down and talk, which he did.

  “I didn’t do nothing,” he protested angrily. “Supposed to check the bodies in the bag, aren’t I? So I did and found that... that thing. That’s all I know.”

  “But you didn’t follow your own protocol, did you Ernst,” Ash pointed out. “You didn’t tell anyone at the hospital. Instead, you wrapped your skimpy little hand round the tag on the dog and phoned the number. Why? Why did you do that, Ernst?”

  The rat face re-materialised as he stuck his nose in the air and made a strange whining noise, as if the question itself caused him pain.

  “Now wait,” he said, “who would do that to a dog? Not me. Not me. Oh, no, I’d never hurt any animal, detective. Never hurt an animal. Where’s my lawyer?”

  “I told you Ernst, no lawyer unless we charge you but you haven’t done anything wrong so I can’t do that, can I?”

  “No lawyer so he says? No lawyer. No phone call neither I’ll wager.” He snorted loudly, a sort of a cross between a sneer and a cackle.

  “You ever seen this guy, Ernst?”

  Ash pushed across a picture of Anwick, which Ernst glanced at momentarily before throwing his head back in his seat and twitching his nose.

  “No, certainly not, sir. No. Never seen him. Don’t know who he is and I never seen him.”

  “You’ve never seen him?”